Kanguru Pockets Flash-Card Data

Kanguru Solutions' Kanguru FC-RW is a portable flash burner that lets users copy flash-card data to a CD without using a computer.

Kanguru Solutions Kanguru FC-RW is a portable flash burner that lets users copy flash-card data to a CD without using a computer.
Such a product may seem superfluous in an era of tight IT budgets, but as road warriors continue to shed their dependence on laptops, they will look for alternative hardware with which to access data.

Released in January, the $199 Kanguru FC-RW is compatible with CompactFlash, IBMs Microdrive, SmartMedia, Secure Digital, Sonys Memory Stick and Memory Stick Pro, and MultiMedia cards. Weighing 2 pounds, the flash-card burner can also be used as an external USB 2.0 CD-RW.

While at the Demo conference last month, I used the Kanguru FC-RW to free space on my digital cameras SD card by burning the images onto a CD-ROM. The internal optical drive supports 36x write speeds, 12x rewrite speeds and 48x read speeds. Windows XP immediately recognized the hardware, and copying the flash-card data to the CD was a breeze.
As a bonus, the Kanguru FC-RW functioned as a portable CD player when plugged into a wall socket.
More information is available at www.kanguru.com.

As a senior writer for eWEEK Labs, Anne writes articles pertaining to IT professionals and the best practices for technology implementation. Anne covers the deployment issues and the business drivers related to technologies including databases, wireless, security and network operating systems. Anne joined eWeek in 1999 as a writer for eWeek's eBiz Strategies section before moving over to Labs in 2001. Prior to eWeek, she covered business and technology at the San Jose Mercury News and at the Contra Costa Times.